The Portland daily press., 1887-01-28
FAMOUS TASTE RS.
How Life has been Sustained for
Days Without Food.
Pail Mall Gazette.

Days Without Food.
Pail Mall Gazette.
The great publicity given to the question
of fasting now before the world, excited by
recent successful and unsuccessful attic npts
to sustain life, has induced me to state few
facts not generally known in reference to
this matter. That life can be supported and
preserved and the ordinary duties performed
on diet comparatively simple and limited
in amount, is an admitted truth and accepted
by most persons who have investigated it.
In 1871 there lived a certain Thomas Wood,
born of Incorporate parents. Up to the age
of forty he INDUCED himself to excess in meat
of fatty nature and in large quantities of
those articles of diet containing fatty ingre-
dents, such as cheese, butter and sugar his
beverage being strong ale. He gradually de-
veloped into man of enormous dimensions,
and complication after complication of disor-
ders arising day by day, he became alarmed al
the inevitable, which stared him in the face
He gradually cut down his diet by degrees
diminishing his beer to begin with, and then
those diets containing sugar and also animal
pudding made of sea buiscuit. With this
change of food all his symptoms disappeared
he became metam0rphosed from a monster
into man once again. The curious fact is
that he abstained from all drink of whatever
description. The ''sea pudding was COM
posed as follows: Three pints of skinned
milk this being boiled, was poured on one
pound of sea biscuit broken into pieces.
This compound being boiled in cloth for
two hours, 1t became pudding Of sufficient
consistency to be cut with knife, and on
this alone he subsisted for two years, enjoy
ing splendid health, and with an absence OF
all those disagreeable symptoms before men,
toned. The quantity taken was one and a
half pounds at O'Clock in the morning as
his breakfast, and the same quantity at noon
all food until the next day. The case OF
Wood is beyond all doubt las two clergymen.
two doctors, and the church warden in the
parish where he lived all testified to the truth
of the facts.
Tracing the history up of fasters. we come
upon that of John Brown, miner in AYR
shire. He lived buried in a coal mine with
out swallowing anything but small quantities
of chalybeate water sucked through straw,
this being sufficient to sustain life even in a
contaminated atmosphere, the nervous excit-
ability being thus diminished, and thus mi
tigating the cravings of hunger This is a
most interesting case, and bears comparison,
at the present time, with the Italian fasters
and their wonderful drinks. At Liege some
golfers were shut up in pit for twenty-four
days, and sustained their lives with water
alone from fountain. Experiments were
made and the water analysed. 1t was found
to contain upon evaporation nothing extraor-
binary; and only lime, or what is called
'calx." The same constituent is supposed to
have existed in the fluid which supported
John Brown, as before alluded to- Why
should this not be the same in the case Of
the Italians water impregnated with lime
suspended in solution. l only give it as a
theory, and, think. correct one. Eliza
beth Woodcock, in:l799 lived eight days on
snow water.
Cecilia Steers, in 1920, lived fifteen days
also on snow water alone. This came from a
well thirty feet deep, and which had been
made for the purpose of obtaining chalk,
Here we have another instance of the ''calx''
In 1865 we read of three women in Italy,
buried for thlrty-seven days in the snow, liy-
ing on snow water also impregnated with
lime. In 1875 Yorkshire gentleman, aged
sixty, absolutely incapacitated from taking
food for thlrty-slx days. When in health he
weighed $40 pounds, and ON the thirty-second
day of his fast he was reduced to 138pounds in
weight. DR. william relates the case of an alb
stainer living seventy-two days without nour-
ishment, on which day he died exhausted
DE lived only on water favored with oran-
ge-juice. Henry Welby. in 1857, for forty
years though of great wealth, never tasted
either fish, flesh or fowl. He died at the ripe
old age of eighty-four. During the whole of
his retirement his chief food was oatmeal
Cruel and a salad of cool herbs.
The longest time recorded in the annals of
physic in which man existed without food
was sixty-one days, the case being that of a
young man driven mad from overwork. Alex
ander Benedlctus mentions a case at Venice
where man lived forty-six days without
food. The history of France states that Louis
the PiOus, Emperor OF France, who died In
$40, existed forty days without food or drink.
Albertus Magnus gives us the record of a
woman OF Cologne, who lived seven weeks
only on water. 1t is said that Democritus
lived to the age of 100 years. and that in the
latter part of his life, for forty days, he lived
on smelling honey and hot bread. Raulin
relates another case where fifty-two days of
fasting took place on water alone. The Med
ical Gazette for July, 1888, contains two re-
markable instances; one of these, patient,
is stated to- have lived six years without
swallowing any food, the mouth being occa-
sionally moistened with water, tea or whey.
which was not swallowed, but spat out In
the other case, which was originally record
ed by Prof. Ricci, OF Turin, an inability to
take food existed for three years. There are
many traditions in all histories relating to
the means employed by various individuals
to support life during danger and privation.
The Indians of Asia and America, when
there is possibility of such state of affairs
existing prepare themselves for emergencies
as follows: They mix the juice of tobacco
with powdered shells in the form of small
balls, which they retain In their mouths.
The gradual solution serves to counterfeit
the uneasy craving for food, it having been
proved by experience that clay introduced
into the stomach relieves hunger. In ITO a
woman living at Yarmouth created consider
able excitement and amazement in the world,
She reported to have lived for seven
years and half without taking food, her lips
only mOistened with water,
The Manuscript Department at the British
Museum contains quaint description of the
fasting of Jane Hodges (Sloan MS, 4,s1D.
She lived in the year 1862 She suffered
from hysterical aphonia, and neither ate nor
drank for nine weeks, so it is reported. She
was under a delusion. and stated that ''she
tasted for the sins of the people, and that
she was the savior of the nations" She ul-
timately recovered and took food. In 1870
we read of the Lancashire fasting GIRL
Ellen Sudworte, aged eleven. This is, how
ever, not one of clear abstaining from solid
food, as she lived on liquids and soupi.
Wenow come to DR.. Tanner. the American
physician, who in 1880 commenced his fast
Of forty days duration. He apparently COM
pleted this, and was stated to have been ben
Gifted to the extent of a25,OOO by it as a COM
mercial speculation.